Guess what is more deadly than the Chinese virus? Chinese vaccines. These vaccines can impair the speech of an individual, cause paralysis or even worse leave the individual in a vegetative state. Unfortunately, China is trying to race ahead in developing a Coronavirus vaccine.
Currently, at least five vaccines produced by Chinese companies are undergoing trial. One of these companies, Sinovac Biotech Ltd. claims that its vaccine will be ready by autumn. Once the human trials are completed, China would try to flood world markets with this vaccine.
Helen Yang, Senior Director of Investor Relations at Sinovac Biotech Ltd. said, “The vaccine shows [protection] on animal models — on monkeys.”
#China has been racing to get ahead in developing a vaccine for the virus but its pharmaceutical industry has been plagued with #vaccine scandals.
“12 days after he was injected with the vaccine, he lost his speech, he lost his voice, he could’t move,” a victim's mother said. pic.twitter.com/6u5ziT9uop
— China in Focus – NTD (@ChinaInFocusNTD) June 23, 2020
But the issue is plain and sample- China’s vaccine industry is nothing short of a scam, and there have been frequent scandals of faulty vaccines. From 2013 to 2016, there were 21 infant deaths in China- all of them attributed to a spate of vaccine scandals. The number of deaths is, of course, official records coming from China and it is highly likely that the number of fatalities were played down.
A huge scandal happened in November 2017, when Changseng and the Wuhan Institute of Biological Products sold more than 652,000 ineffective DPT (Diphtheria, Pertussis (whooping cough), and Tetanus) vaccines in the Jilin and Hubei provinces.
The Wuhan Institute of Biological Products, which belongs to the State-run Sinopharm Group, also happens to be one of the Chinese contenders for developing a vaccine showing how seriously China is looking to compromise with public health across the world all over again.
China has empowered a vaccine industry that invests more in selling and distribution, rather than ensuring safety, and Research & Development. In fact, Chinese regulators turn a blind eye when it comes to State-owned firms like the Wuhan Institute of Biological Products.
40 per cent of China’s vaccine industry is dominated by State-owned firms, who know that the regulators will not crack down on them even if they are caught producing faulty products.
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) rewards those local administrators who contribute to GDP growth, even if it comes at the cost of public health.
The local administrators, in turn, overlook the unethical and unsafe practices of firms like Changsheng. Let alone punishing such defective vaccine manufacturers, the CCP rewards them.
The ongoing Five-Year Plan in China (2016-2020) designates biotech products an Emerging Strategic Industry. Consequently, tax benefits are being extended to leading vaccine-makers, including those that sell lakhs of faulty products.
The most recent vaccine scandal in China that got reported outside the autocratic country is the 2019 Polio scandal.
This scandal happened in the Jinhu County of eastern China’s Jiangsu province. 145 children were administered expired polio vaccinations. The number is again Beijing’s official version, and thus highly unreliable.
Later, parents of Jinhu’s 20,000 children found that not just Polio vaccines, but the diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis (DPT), hepatitis B and varicella vaccines administered to their children were also faulty.
It is unclear as to how many children in China have been rendered indisposed due to faulty vaccines. China underreports and rarely takes action on those manufacturing faulty products.
In July 2018, penalties were imposed on those implicated in the November 2017 scandal, only after a public outcry.
However, the crackdown on grieving parents, protesters and whistle-blowers is often brutal. King of Vaccines was published on China social media platform, WeChat. It exposed lax standards in China’s vaccine industry. The Chinese government deleted it for exposing how the Communist regime was putting the lives of millions at risk.
Additionally, ten people protesting at the Tiananmen Square as a part of the ensuing public outcry were detained. No information of their whereabouts was given to their families and these protesters have simply disappeared.
After the 2019 Polio scandal too, protesting parents were detained by authorities, and the autocratic regime also censored the social media.
Now, China wants to sell such vaccines to the entire world. It is also using its influence in the World Health Organisation (WHO) to promote its faulty products. The WHO Chief Scientist Soumya Swaminathan has disclosed that the UN agency is in talks with multiple Chinese manufacturers, including Sinovac, concerning potential vaccines.
This is outrageous- first WHO helped China spread the Chinese virus, and now it will help China sell its harmful, defective vaccines.
Around 5,00,000 people have already died due to the Chinese virus. Many more could die due to Chinese vaccines.
